#229: On slow healing and grieving lost dreams
Hello!
For the past 10 days, my head has been swimming in poems. The Alipore Post Poetry Month and a content writing project have ensured that I’m constantly debating the best word possible in any given context and it’s kind of fun experiencing sentence formation this way.
A blackout poem I wrote yesterday that I feel like sharing:
Based on this, I’d like to ask you a few questions, dear reader. If you feel like replying to the email with your responses, I’d appreciate that greatly. If you feel like journaling about it or answering it just for yourself, that’s perfectly fine too.
How do you grieve the loss of a dream?
How do you stop your mind from going into self sabotage mode?
What are the ways you pick yourself up from a slump?
Poetry Corner
On the theme of dreams disappeared and slow healing, a few stunning poems:
1. Listen by Barbara Crooker
I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there’s a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves’
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals’
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.
2. On Safety by Nadine Pinede
When the storms of life
come bearing down
threatening to
lash you senseless,
seek shelter.
Find the warm
blanket you caress
like the felted fur
of your cat
curled before
a glowing hearth,
of breath that fills
both heart and earth.
Breathe.
There’s always time
to curse the darkness.
After the tears,
light a honeycomb candle
and heal your own sun.
The bridge
from sorrow to joy
may seem to vanish
in the flood,
but who says you
can’t join those
who cross over,
with a single
braided rope
of gratitude.
3. We Look with Uncertainty by Anne Hillman
We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
4. Yes, We Can Talk by Mark Nepo
Having loved enough and lost enough,
I am no longer searching,
just opening.
No longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.
These are the irritations that rub into a pearl
So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen tot he sea
And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions down,
and water every living seed.
And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone. but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it is a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather
into the surf that human shells
call god.
5. Téssera by Nathalie Handal (Excerpt)
Maybe we need
to empty our souls
to find those
thinking of us
in memories we forgot,
maybe we will see
darkness healing
as ships land on pale shores,
or maybe we will fall into the sea,
forgetting that love
is a longer voyage
than life.
Recommended Listening
I’ve been listening to a lot of music this month, surprisingly. Here’s my still-being-updated April Playlist:
Links of the Week
WaterBear, a streaming platform dedicated to the future of our planet
Data Visualization Reinterpreted: The Story of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures Album Cover
The necessity of creative inquiry in troubled times (So proud to see the mural Mayur and I made as part of this thoughtful piece by Carissa Pobre)
First Acts: Creatives share their (very) early work (Thoroughly enjoyed this)
New Merch Alert!
Dropped a new daily sketchbook and some photo-postcards on the merch store! 😌✌🏽🙋🏻♀️
A parting thought
“You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.”
-Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Sending you a carton full of tenderness via this newsletter.
Stay hydrated, ok?
Rohini
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Breathtaking poems. Thank you for these! And for that Rilke quote at the end. An endless source of inspiration, he was.
I also love the way you led this letter with your “head swimming in poems”... that feeling is positively otherworldly, isn’t it? xx